Defense Planting Seeds of Doubt; Is the Reiser Son to be Believed?

The Hans Reiser defense on Thursday zeroed in on the case's only eyewitness -- the Linux programmer's 8-year-old son: A child psychologist took the stand in a bid to convince jurors that the boy, when he was 6, saw his mother Nina Reiser walk out of the Oakland hills house where prosecutors said she never left alive.

The boy, the only witness in the case who was at the scene of the alleged crime when her mother vanished, has said repeatedly to the police and during a preliminary hearing outside the jury's presence that he saw his mother leave the house. But in November, while in front of the 12-member jury here, he never directly said he saw his mother leave.

On the stand was Michael Fraga, a child psychologist who reviewed the transcripts of the six different interviews the young son gave to jurors and to the authorities about that Sept. 3, 2006 fateful day. (Fraga concludes that the "predominant theme" of seeing the mother leave should be given "credibility.")